Spatial distribution analysis of seismic activity based on GMI, LMI, and LISA in China

Recently, all kinds of geological disasters happen frequently on the earth. In China, there are countless earthquakes every year, which greatly affect the country’s economic level and development as well as the people’s life and health. The analysis of seismic activity is becoming more and more significant. In this article, the spatial distribution of China’s seismic activities was analyzed by using the provincial seismic data from 1970 to 2013. On the basis of spatial autocorrelation analysis theory, Global Moran’s I, Local Moran’s I, and the Local Indicators of Spatial Association are used to measure the geospatial distribution characteristics of China’s seismic activities. The research results show that earthquakes in mainland China have significant global autocorrelation characteristics as a whole, and the global autocorrelation coefficients are all positive. And the Z-value test (P < 0.05) shows that earthquakes in mainland China present a spatial agglomeration pattern. Furthermore, we observed a reduction trend in disparities of seismic activity among regions in China.